The role of mission councils in the Scottish mission in South Africa: 1864—1923

Abstract

The role of Mission Councils in the growth and development of the Scottish Mission in South Africa is a confusing and vexing one. Whereas they were conceived and established as a means of facilitating mission, they often hindered this by drawing distinctions between agents of mission and delineating spheres of authority through exercises of power, even in opposition to expressed mission policy derived from Scotland. In essence, they were an integral part of the hegemonic missionary worldview, which frustrated progress towards the formation of the Bantu Presbyterian Church of South Africa in 1923.